Search

Maryland Historical Society

In 1986 Anti-Apartheid demonstrations spread across the nation’s college and university campuses. Shantytown protests sprang up at Dartmouth, Georgetown, George Washington, Johns Hopkins (JHU), Penn State, University of Maryland, and as far away as the University of Utah. The objectives of the student protesters was to highlight the living conditions of blacks in South Africa [...]

Green Mount Cemetery, dedicated in 1839, is a paradigm of the rural cemetery movement which transformed American burial practice. Like other mid nineteenth-century reform efforts such as temperance, abolition, and women’s rights, it was an attempt to improve society. Yet Green Mount has not attracted the attention enjoyed by other early rural cemeteries, such as [...]

Originally posted on November 29, 2012 Many who devote their lives to bringing about social change can recall a single incident or episode that altered their perceptions and determined their path in life. Civil rights activist Rosa Parks recalls that one of the first ways she realized the difference between “a black world and a [...]

Many of the hundreds of students who pass through the Humanities Building at Loyola University Maryland each year may not know the true significance of the halls through which they are walking. Indeed, one may not realize that almost exactly one hundred years ago the officials of the U.S. Army War Department were making necessary [...]

This past summer, I was one of five Loyola University students that conducted research on the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. The club, which met on Tuesday afternoons between 1890 and 1920, was only a small part of the nationwide movement of women’s clubs to emerge after the Civil War. Most of them served as outlets [...]

Old cookbooks, both published and handwritten, can offer a tempting glimpse into historic foodways. The H. Furlong Baldwin Library contains many classic Maryland cookbooks like The Queen of The Kitchen written in 1870 by the well-connected Mary Lloyd Tyson, and the more modest 1853 Domestic Cookery by Quaker homesteader Elizabeth Ellicott Lea. There was an [...]

The previous installment of this series appeared on December 15, 2016. Jane Schoeberlein (1924-2014), known as Jennie Sokolowska in her youth, was the daughter of Polish immigrants of limited means. She spent her childhood and early adult life in the Fell’s Point area of East Baltimore. Here are a few of her stories that touch [...]

Chris Jackson, a senior producer for the BBC, was driving near his home in Newcastle, England when he heard a song on the radio by Mark Knopfler, a famous British rock star, entitled “Sailing to Philadelphia” recorded as part of the album of the same name with James Taylor. Knopfler, a native of the northeast [...]

The museum staff refreshed the Folk Art gallery several months ago and in perusing the newly installed pieces, this intricately designed paper cutwork immediately caught our attention. The delicacy of the work, coupled with the knowledge that a ten-year-old girl had created these mini masterpieces captivated our imaginations. Who was this child? Label copy identified [...]